Community feedback request regarding Rule 6: "No Politics"
3mon 1d ago by sh.itjust.works/u/neidu3 in asklemmy
As I'm sure you've already memorized the community rules as if it was your moms birthday, I probably need not post it, but here is rule 6 anyway:
- No US Politics.
Please don’t post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or askusa@discuss.online
I am writing this post in an effort to gather feedback on how the community feels about this rule. In short, keep it as it is, or revise it.
It is my personal belief that the main purpose it serves is to avoid the community from mainly revolving around whatever daft thing the orange lardsack last said or did. And while it serves that purpose well, I think it also inhibits some potentially interesting discussions.
For example, one possible revision could be to allow for questions regarding US politics, but with a requirement that the topic has to be regarding issues 25 years ago (that may or may not be relevant today).
Alternatively, would it be useful/entertaining to occasionally have a "Contemporary US politics question megathread" as a contained outlet?
Please let me hear your thunks. This post will stay stickied for "a while".
UPDATE: There seems to be overwhelming majority in keeping r6 as is, at minimum. Thank you for your input, and stay classy.
100% keen on keeping it. Expanding it to keep all political discussions out would be nice but I know that won't happen.
Expanding it to keep all political discussions out would be nice
Not even possible. Every post would devolve into a discussion of what's political.
The rule is currently US politics, where I would like to expand it to other countries because /r/Europe turns into US politics because "it effects Europe"
It seems that the rule seems to work well enough here as is. In addition to the rule, how you enforce it is equally (if not more) important too.
Just narrow the definition of politics to party politics plus named subjects.
For the love of god, keep it as it is!
AskUSA@discuss.online exists so I say this rule should stay. I feel bad enough about the deluge of US news our non-yank co users deal with as it is.
but that also doesn't exactly like "overt politics"... whatever that means
Ah yeah my mistake. Whatever politics comms they link to in the sidebar is what I meant. I want to say askpolitics? Yup.
As a US citizen, keep the rule. As laid out in the text of the rule, there are already communities where questions of that nature can be asked.
Agreed here. People should wonder what normal life like can be in the USA than our politics. Not saying it's great, but I think it gives better insight than who people voted for.
It's possible to imagine people having good questions about US politics, e.g. something like "I'm considering running for this public office in this state, what do I need to know about x?" but good luck crafting a rule that allows that and not the worthless noise.
Please keep it and I would even say to enforce it more strictly because I see so many question that I would categorize as US politics that are still allowed.
There are other communities to discuss politics, usa or any country. I say keep politics out.
I'll put it this way. I would prefer zero politics. If you allow them I'm gone.
People who want to talk politics can easily create their own place to do so and nothing is preventing them from joining other places that are political discussion havens.
It already gets political ?s even though it's not supposed to. Taking out the rule just encourages even MORE of them.
I think it’s a great rule!
To me, the links to alternate communities are essential. They allow you to set restrictions while still maintaining a helpful atmosphere. Sometimes, people have legitimate, good-faith questions, and don’t know where to ask them. Those links help demonstrate a real concern for the users. Well done!
Keep the rule as is. US politics already gets brought up enough already.
Please please pleeeease keep it.
Edit: If possible, disallow politics in general.
I think it should be expanded into a rule of no politics in general. While the us politcs have the most effect(are most know worldwide) EU poltics and so on should also not be discussed here imo
I don't see a problem with a bunch of European-specific questions being asked, so I question the need for an expanded rule.
If you broaden the rule, you run at risk of banning or discouraging desirable questions. Stuff about economics or lifestyle. Those are "political" too, after all.
I mean yo run the risk of banning some stuff regardless of if you only ban us politcs or eu politcs. What would be a reason why questions about european politcs would be any different than us politcs. best would be to just ban polutics in general, while keeping lifestyle/economical stuff etc, this would however require some nuance
Edit: to specify i don't mean to ban European specific questions, just eu-poltics.
Fair, but nuanced rules are difficult to enforce, and somewhat open to interpretation. This leads to people trying to skirt the rules and also good faith posts which break the rules which leads to conflict also.
I think it's better to keep things as simple as possible, as long as the rule is good enough.
Totally agree. But let's for example say someone asks a question about something related to economics. I think it would be unfair if Europeans could answer a lot of stuff about politics, while Americans are pretty limited.
Imo It already requires nuance at the moment, the only thing that would change is that all users would be treated the same
Keep.
Political questions are almost always either bait or pure laziness
eyyyyy, shameless self-promo, but i made a community a couple days ago called politicaloptimism@piefed.social
i'm a little nervous about bringing this up since i'm the one of the only people active there right now, but we have a "Seeking Optimism" flair for people who are concerned about things and want assurance for the most sensational narratives over what's happening.
Subbed.
Well, I just subbed! I think it’ll be good for my mental health.
Yeah keep it. The pedo dictatorship can be discuss in other communities.
PieFed has already implemented a feature which allows mods to move posts from one community to another. Lemmy and NodeBB are also working on this feature.
Ideally we choose a community where these posts are moved to, that way any great discussions aren't lost and they can carry on in the proper community.
25 years is pretty extreme, it's not like we need to wait decades for whole fields of research to occur before we have our own opinions--we're not academics with a responsibility to not spout random bullshit. Being randos on the internet, spouting bullshit is actually one of our primary activities.
4 years is probably sufficient to keep the volume reasonably balanced.
I think 25 may be too much but it's fine.
4 isn't nearly enough. At least a decade.
I'd say 8 would be better, just because they can have a second term. Usually those are consecutive, but still
Being randos on the internet, spouting bullshit is actually one of our primary activities.
I disagree. This community aspires to be one of the low-bullshit places.
How about "no politics involving people still living and active"? i.e. you can discuss Nixon but not Trump.
I really like how this rule turned out on UK subreddits like r/casualUK. It makes for a much more relaxing community.
Keep
Keep it. There's more than enough places to discuss politics.
it make sense on a niche community, but an ask anything community it will just devolve into politics eventually anyways.
Fuck America, that's my take.
Where do you draw the line between world news and politics? I mean the president launching airstrikes on Iran for Israel's forever war, is that politics? The US annexing Greenland? The US bullying the EU into letting tech run roughshod over their users?
What about the EU imposing age checks and chatcontrol as a trojan horse to get inside liberal democracy to id every account and every ip and connect it to id cards and likeness, and run everything a person does or says through AI threat detection, run by Palantir type organizations, to make secret social scores to be used in secret in myriad ways against people in ways they can never know and not challenge? Is that politics?
It's impossible to extract world news from politics completely is it not? I personally have been ignoring whatever dumbass shit the president has been saying, and political news myself, just trying to follow events, but you can't separate them completely.
I had an issue where the politics community did not allow discussion posts and ask lemmy did not allow politics and it was like. what the heck can I discuss this. that being said I would prefer for politics communities to allow for discussion posts than politics in general ask lemmy.
Keep the rule as it is, and take those kinds of discussions in communities meant for political discussion. There's already enough of US politics everywhere else.
Maybe you could have one day a week where it's allowed? The constant barrage of US politics can be exhausting, but there can definitely be some interesting questions about it.
I like the principle, but I think posts from that day would crowd the front page or the top section for too long after the day is over.
I guess you could close the threads after the day is over. For me personally, it wouldn't matter either way, as I never use the active/top feeds to browse. They don't seem too useful on a "small" platform like Lemmy, where they'll remain static for quite a long time.
As long as "no ethics" doesn't become a new rule, I'm okay with this.
Today, everything is political.
More and more people assign identities to themselves based on what someone said else said, what products they enjoy, or what their beliefs are.
As an example, disease, technology, food, and the weather are all political topics.
This is why 'American' politics are banned, and not politics broadly, right?
Politics is scifi for dummies.
What does this mean …?
Nothing, they don't know either, they just heard it or read it online and now they feel absolved from the duty of political thought (which is just applied ethics in the end).
I'll have you know that's a presoak original.
And when you deepthroat the meme of the hour, and jump and froth and babble angrily in lockstep, you aren't achieving diddly.
Everything is politics and anyone who thinks it isn't needs to check their privilege.
"But I don't want to question my own beliefs and test my moral fiber, I just wanna have fun online!!!" - average netizen
So. In my experience, places with a generic "No politics" rule tend to become Nazi bars very quickly. That's not the case here, partly (I think) because it specifies US politics. Makes it more clear that this isn't a place where the only genders are "Male" and "Political," even if that kind of is the case in the US.
I think something akin to "Nothing about any current or former politician, or government entity" could be a way to allow discussions about certain parts of politics without others. In the communities (non-lemmy) I've run that's the usual rule I have alongside some others that aren't relevant here.
I would mention that word filters exist, but this post is a great example of why those don't work very well in a lot of cases. "The daft orange lardsack" is a case where self-censorship ends up leading to word filters being less effective. It's also a great way to showcase that you think body shaming is fine in certain circumstances. I, personally, disagree, and think that we can talk about his actions without mentioning his weight, but y'know. What do I know
What do you mean "orange lardsack?" Sounds like body shaming. Let's debate about that here in the comments.
No one took the bait.
For those wondering, the OP made this meta-post political, and I wanted to make a point of how unwelcome a political debate would be here.